The system of violence and incarceration affects black people much more than it affects non-blacks. From experience, when we buy the framing that the system is fair and equal, then we distance ourselves from the reality of violence and incarceration that has plagued BIPOC communities for hundreds of years of this continent.
If we fail to frame the issue in light of systematic injustice, then we are lost in illusion and idealistic alienation
That’s incredibly bad faith. How do you define crime? So if a law is passed that says its illegal to be homeless (another systematic consequence that marginalizes a growing number of people), well now crime has increased in the city because a new category of illegality has been introduced.
Veterans are more affected by homelessness than other demographics, and are now being targeted for violent incarceration because of a made up crime. Police departments get more funding as crime “increases,” even though what has been scientifically proven to actually help eliminate homelessness among veterans, would be to get them some money, housing, food, mental health care, and social support.
Except it’s cheaper to buy cops and prison cells than it is to help people, which means a higher percentage of the profits earned from exploiting workers like you go to landlords and mass murder. And those cops and prison cells are used disproportionately to harm black communities. It all comes back around.
But of course those homeless veterans committed a crime so you don’t have to think about that.
Racism is just one way that the system convinces you to sell out your neighbors and accept worsening conditions than you deserve. You sell out your communities for the right to fight over scraps. It’s myopic and small minded to reduce all social problems to personal responsibility, when the rich are clearly conspiring against you and other workers, especially black workers.
You’ll eat shit, as long as it is a larger bowl than those whose oppression you ignore. You reduce the plight of others to personal responsibility because that’s what fear and alienation does to people.
You’re like the poor rural white worker who flies a confederate rebel flag, clinging to delusion rather than reality. Slave owning confederate planters only ever made white workers poor and disenfranchised, sent whites to die in a brutal war because we were worth less to them than their black property.
Made to hate yourself, you displace that hate onto others. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer and you’ll keep happily playing your part. I hope you are able to change and see things for what they are, rather than make excuses for a system that hates and exploits you. Hopefully you’ll never be in a position where you need help but your very existence warrants constant investigation and incarceration. but looking at the world today, I don’t really like our odds.
I think I saw another comment where someone was talking about their favorite flavour of ice cream instead of about racism in America – shouldn’t you be recentering the conversation on that? I’m sure you can string together a coherent take about how the ice cream industry is racist.
My goal isnt to string together a coherent idealist take, it is to find material oppression that actually harm people, and meet people there in the fight against oppression that affects us both. I dont always succeed, but I try very hard and dedicate a lot of time and energy talking to people and learning from their experiences rather than putting others in a box.
My take on the ice cream industry is that the largest companies should be publicly owned and the profits redistributed to the public good, including reparations for historic victims of slavery, targeted racial violence and disenfranchisement, because not doing so is an affront to my own freedom, and to everyone’s freedom, except a wealthy few.
But honestly most grocery store foods are owned by only 2 companies who have incentives to make food worse and more expensive so they can increase their own profits. In the mean time, we get sicker.
You seem more preoccupied with racism than I am. I just want people to have a fair shot at a good life. A lot of the arguments you are making sound to me like someone who doesn’t think they can get ahead without some cop taking out others. Your own views are proof of the violence I am referring to, as your arguments are a textbook example of how people act when they feel threatened. If there wasn’t a worse prison to place others in, you might see your own conditions as a prison and try to escape them. I’m just trying to help you see the cage we are all in, and the reasons we are in it.
Maybe that’s futile, but I’m an optimist in that way
To me, racism is an objective social condition to overcome. Race has a quality that is very personal to people so it can’t be overlooked. I take it very seriously but I dont want to reduce all society’s problems to race. You seem aware that doing so creates its own problems, I agree with the sentiment but does not warrant complete dismissal of race and racism as objective social conditions. It is an over correction.
Because of this over correction, you see racism and anti-racism as qualities of the other, in this case, i am an other with an anti-racist quality.
Rather than fighting a system of racism, that exists as part of a larger system of oppression, you seem to have adopted a posture that any mention of race or racism is a personal failing, an idea that can be defeated with individual logic, rather than an objective condition to be fought with solidarity and practice. Because racism is everywhere, you see anti-racism everywhere, but since it is, to you, only an individual opinion in other people, your only course of action is to respond to them one-on-one. In order to avoid appearing explicitly racist, and to effectively .debate your own alienated opinions against others, you have to steel man and think about this stuff all the time.
I don’t have to do that. I just listen to people, read books, and report on my own limited understanding. I don’t have to work half as hard because my perspective doesn’t disappear other people’s experiences, it naturally includes them. I don’t have to search frantically for details to question, or ways to feel superior. I can just listen and discuss. If done correctly I don’t frustrate myself or other people nearly as much, I can just be dumb and live my life and speak my mind, and if there’s something new I need to learn, I can just do that instead of frantically rejecting objective truth in order to maintain attachment to a system that hates and oppresses us.
I can have strong principles and take care of my friends and family, unlike the millions of families who lost a loved one to racist conspiracy theories like qanon. People who thought they had the world figured out while losing what really matters while selling themselves and their communities out for a glimpse of a false feeling of community.
In other words I’ve known a lot of different kinds of people, and the ones who are most distracted, haunted, and sad, are the ones who buy into the lies presented to us by the oligarchy and their proxies.
I just hate to see someone work so hard to remain attached to dastardly, corrosive lies. But of course I am clearly an over thinker so maybe I lie to myself a little as well, to justify my own individualistic indulgence.
Correct. Not for merely existing as a black person.
We don’t need to knee-jerk and make everything about race just because we saw a picture of a black person in an article.
The system of violence and incarceration affects black people much more than it affects non-blacks. From experience, when we buy the framing that the system is fair and equal, then we distance ourselves from the reality of violence and incarceration that has plagued BIPOC communities for hundreds of years of this continent.
If we fail to frame the issue in light of systematic injustice, then we are lost in illusion and idealistic alienation
Every time a crime happens, we need to check if they are black. If they are, we need to screech about racism.
Got it. Thanks coach!
That’s incredibly bad faith. How do you define crime? So if a law is passed that says its illegal to be homeless (another systematic consequence that marginalizes a growing number of people), well now crime has increased in the city because a new category of illegality has been introduced.
Veterans are more affected by homelessness than other demographics, and are now being targeted for violent incarceration because of a made up crime. Police departments get more funding as crime “increases,” even though what has been scientifically proven to actually help eliminate homelessness among veterans, would be to get them some money, housing, food, mental health care, and social support.
Except it’s cheaper to buy cops and prison cells than it is to help people, which means a higher percentage of the profits earned from exploiting workers like you go to landlords and mass murder. And those cops and prison cells are used disproportionately to harm black communities. It all comes back around.
But of course those homeless veterans committed a crime so you don’t have to think about that.
Racism is just one way that the system convinces you to sell out your neighbors and accept worsening conditions than you deserve. You sell out your communities for the right to fight over scraps. It’s myopic and small minded to reduce all social problems to personal responsibility, when the rich are clearly conspiring against you and other workers, especially black workers.
You’ll eat shit, as long as it is a larger bowl than those whose oppression you ignore. You reduce the plight of others to personal responsibility because that’s what fear and alienation does to people.
You’re like the poor rural white worker who flies a confederate rebel flag, clinging to delusion rather than reality. Slave owning confederate planters only ever made white workers poor and disenfranchised, sent whites to die in a brutal war because we were worth less to them than their black property.
Made to hate yourself, you displace that hate onto others. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer and you’ll keep happily playing your part. I hope you are able to change and see things for what they are, rather than make excuses for a system that hates and exploits you. Hopefully you’ll never be in a position where you need help but your very existence warrants constant investigation and incarceration. but looking at the world today, I don’t really like our odds.
I think I saw another comment where someone was talking about their favorite flavour of ice cream instead of about racism in America – shouldn’t you be recentering the conversation on that? I’m sure you can string together a coherent take about how the ice cream industry is racist.
My goal isnt to string together a coherent idealist take, it is to find material oppression that actually harm people, and meet people there in the fight against oppression that affects us both. I dont always succeed, but I try very hard and dedicate a lot of time and energy talking to people and learning from their experiences rather than putting others in a box.
My take on the ice cream industry is that the largest companies should be publicly owned and the profits redistributed to the public good, including reparations for historic victims of slavery, targeted racial violence and disenfranchisement, because not doing so is an affront to my own freedom, and to everyone’s freedom, except a wealthy few.
But honestly most grocery store foods are owned by only 2 companies who have incentives to make food worse and more expensive so they can increase their own profits. In the mean time, we get sicker.
You seem more preoccupied with racism than I am. I just want people to have a fair shot at a good life. A lot of the arguments you are making sound to me like someone who doesn’t think they can get ahead without some cop taking out others. Your own views are proof of the violence I am referring to, as your arguments are a textbook example of how people act when they feel threatened. If there wasn’t a worse prison to place others in, you might see your own conditions as a prison and try to escape them. I’m just trying to help you see the cage we are all in, and the reasons we are in it.
Maybe that’s futile, but I’m an optimist in that way
How so?
To me, racism is an objective social condition to overcome. Race has a quality that is very personal to people so it can’t be overlooked. I take it very seriously but I dont want to reduce all society’s problems to race. You seem aware that doing so creates its own problems, I agree with the sentiment but does not warrant complete dismissal of race and racism as objective social conditions. It is an over correction.
Because of this over correction, you see racism and anti-racism as qualities of the other, in this case, i am an other with an anti-racist quality.
Rather than fighting a system of racism, that exists as part of a larger system of oppression, you seem to have adopted a posture that any mention of race or racism is a personal failing, an idea that can be defeated with individual logic, rather than an objective condition to be fought with solidarity and practice. Because racism is everywhere, you see anti-racism everywhere, but since it is, to you, only an individual opinion in other people, your only course of action is to respond to them one-on-one. In order to avoid appearing explicitly racist, and to effectively .debate your own alienated opinions against others, you have to steel man and think about this stuff all the time.
I don’t have to do that. I just listen to people, read books, and report on my own limited understanding. I don’t have to work half as hard because my perspective doesn’t disappear other people’s experiences, it naturally includes them. I don’t have to search frantically for details to question, or ways to feel superior. I can just listen and discuss. If done correctly I don’t frustrate myself or other people nearly as much, I can just be dumb and live my life and speak my mind, and if there’s something new I need to learn, I can just do that instead of frantically rejecting objective truth in order to maintain attachment to a system that hates and oppresses us.
I can have strong principles and take care of my friends and family, unlike the millions of families who lost a loved one to racist conspiracy theories like qanon. People who thought they had the world figured out while losing what really matters while selling themselves and their communities out for a glimpse of a false feeling of community.
In other words I’ve known a lot of different kinds of people, and the ones who are most distracted, haunted, and sad, are the ones who buy into the lies presented to us by the oligarchy and their proxies.
I just hate to see someone work so hard to remain attached to dastardly, corrosive lies. But of course I am clearly an over thinker so maybe I lie to myself a little as well, to justify my own individualistic indulgence.
When did I advocate for that?